A few months after picking up a PlayStation 2 and telling myself "just put games on the hard drive, do NOT go down the rabbit hole of buying used games," I saw the cover of Final Fantasy Origins and was so spellbound by Yoshitaka Amano's gorgeous art that I broke my solemn vow. It's just that meme of the guy looking over his shoulder, my gaze pulled away from my 1TB Western Digital hard drive towards the alluring figure of Final Fantasy Origins... Yeah... Yeah this game's got a great ass...

Whoa. Ok, I guess Origins still has me captive. But who could blame me? It's a fine looking collection, and it happens to hold two Final Fantasy games I've never played before outside of dipping my toes into the first few minutes of Final Fantasy I. It's not like grabbing this would set me down a costly path of buying every Final Fantasy on the PSX. That'd just be crazy!

I've already reviewed both games in this collection, so I won't go over what I think about them individually. Instead, I want to touch on the improvements Origins makes over the original releases. The most apparent of which is its presentation. Gone are the flat 8-bit graphics in favor of something more akin to the Super Nintendo era of Final Fantasy games, with the score getting its own boost to match Origins' graphical fidelity. Though it is graphically the same as the WonderSwan release for which it is a port of, the PSX Origins collection also includes a sparing amount of FMVs which adds a little more of that Amano flavor, and that's just what daddy wants its really graet. .

More importantly, Origins introduces a ton of quality-of-life improvements to modernize the experience of playing both games, including a "memo" save feature that allows you to make a hot save to the system's RAM. This is invaluable given the length and brutality of some of Final Fantasy's dungeons and was all but mandatory to ease my slog through Final Fantasy II's Pandaemonium. You still need to commit to sitting down and finishing these dungeons in a single playthrough but is eases the burden of redoing them from scratch due to bad RNG, which I feel is a good compromise. It's also just nice that spells which did not function correctly (if at all) in the original games now work as intended.

This might all seem a bit too transformative, but I don't get the sense that any of these changes and fixes trivialize the experience so much as they simply make it more palatable. These still feel like NES era JRPGs, the way they're paced and the order of operations you must undertake to progress through them still feels obtuse in a way that's authentic, but I can also sit down and play them, you know? I think that's exactly what you'd want from a collection like this. Also, god damn that cover art. Fuck.

Final Fantasy I review
Final Fantasy II review

Own the physical copy of origins, (bought off ebay back in the day for crazy money) still works on my ps3 but for some reason the graphics stutter like crazy, making them almost unplayable. sigh

Oh well, from what I remember FF1 is ok, very bare bones and basic but obviously revolutionary for its time. Pretty short to beat too, I think probably 10 hours-ish. Never finished FF2 though, the weird, grindy mechanics they brought in just didn't really work and made the game a slog to play through.

i recently said that ff2 was a bad game. i was wrong.

while i can't speak to direct experience with the famicom original, i was half-watching hcbailly's let's play on my 2nd monitor while i played this, off and on. i understand that there are some differences—key among them, aside from the obvious (graphics and music), being the removal of penalty to magic from weapons only. this is a fine change, i think, though i rarely attacked with my mages even if i kept them in the front row with shields, boosting their evasion. the varying penalty on armor remains, and it makes sense: the heavier the armor, the heavier the penalty. firion was my white mage, maria handling black magic, guy serving as the heavy hitter, and the ever-changing 4th slot simply being extra physical damage.

this version, unlike some of the later releases, keeps the select action/cancel bug from the original game, which allows you to skill up weapons and spells by repeatedly choosing an action and, of course, canceling it. i actually found this to be kind of cool in that i would 'prime' spells with a few false casts before making my selection, lending the game a sort of morrowind feel—flailing and failing until you land a hit and grow your abilities from there. combined with the system of spell levels, e.g. only esuna 5 can cure stone, or spells you cast on enemies may fail depending on their hidden level vs. your spells', etc... combat was consistently engaging and really the highlight of the game.

there've been better things written about the game's setting and tone, but i will briefly echo all that by saying this might be the bleakest final fantasy. your party is a small group of bereaved friends who set out to challenge an empire crushing the people of this world under its heel seemingly without reason beyond demonstrating its awful power. it's extremely straightforward, raw and quintessential final fantasy, rarely playful outside of a small handful of odd moments like firion being seduced by a shapeshifting demon. (he would've gone for it.) there's just something about the sorrowful mood of it all that makes it resonate a bit more than one might expect. i really think the redrawn style of this iteration lends itself to that, and this is the version i'd recommend playing. learn from my mistakes and avoid the pixel remaster.

Beaten: Nov 11 2021
Time: 29 Hours
Platform: PS Vita

This is just a review for the Final Fantasy I portion of this collection, FF2 is still on the docket. Moving on...

Final Fantasy I challenges all of the assumptions I had about the beginnings of JRPGs, and dives deeply into its D&D influences in ways none of its contemporaries ever even dreamed to. In fact, it plays just as much like the first Baldur's Gate as it does like Dragon Quest, even though like, Dragon Quest 1 is a pretty earnest attempt to adapt computer Baldur's Gate's progenitors, games like Wizardry and Ultima, for a Japanese console audience.

When you boot up FF1, you get a party-creation screen not unlike what many WRPGs give you. There's a small selection of classes, and you create your four person party with whatever wacky or absurdly realistic names you're feeling that day. Click start and you get dropped right into the overworld, albeit with a nice intro video for this version in particular. Once you're in the game, you're free to do what you want! Er, maybe as much as you can in your favorite top-down zelda game. To get to other places around the world, you'll have to progress the story, and if you wanna progress the story, you'd better head into that town.

Speaking more broadly, I probably oversold this game's differences from what JRPGs would and have become. The progression and structure isn't a radical departure from DQ1, the mechanics are more what stuck me as wild. There's like, huge swaths of design in here wholeheartly ripped out of early D&D still, but it's more in the tone, and the structure of the magic system, and, uh, mind flayers in the ice cavern dungeon??? I really do love it, even if it has almost none of the storytelling focus nor much of the unique "Final Fantasy" flavor of its lineage.

What is here however is broad strokes of fatalistic, romantic art, bounding quests that are pretty typical for the early 90s. Delving deep into an earthen cave because some townspeople mentioned a vampire might be in there causing havoc for the health of the land, only to stumble into the cyclical, theme-ridden plot, it's really like nothing else except maybe a good session of D&D. The new art especially drives home the feeling that you're playing inside of a sourcebook, full of concept art and mechanics and ideas, but without all that much structure.

It's not the most robust game, however. There's almost no QoL here, to a comical degree! You can't refill MP inside a dungeon, pheonix downs don't exist for reviving party members yet, and just overall it's very raw feeling. Later releases of FF1 smoothed out a lot of these edges, and maybe those are really the better way to experience the game now. But it didn't bother me until the last dungeon or two, which are truly marathonic in length. This is certainly a fine way to play this game, and if you're looking for a challenge like the original NES version, this is one of the more accessible ways to give it a shot.

FF I is a good one while still a little sluggish compared to any other version, but II is awfully influenced by those pointless loadings SFX making the pacing more dreadful as the base game could already suffer (that's why GBA and PSP are still the best ones. For both the first 2 legendary games).

Awesome that FF I has both the NES difficulty and an easy one to just enjoy the game. A very cute feature. FF II doesn't need that considering how broken it can get.

I noticed Backloggd put the same versions as "2001" for both PS1 and WonderSwan separately. I guess it would make more sense to consider those just the WonderSwan then and specifying in Origins case which ones have been played/completed.

Gotta give props to the 2 games that started it all when it comes to this legendary franchise.

Are they the best the series has to offer? Not even close... but I don't regret my short time playing through each title.

Also, I'd like to add that I found enjoyment in what is considered the "black sheep" of the franchise: Final Fantasy II.

I actually really enjoyed playing it for what it was. It was nice to see the leaps they made in storytelling from the first to the second title - from its more action-packed opening, actual characters with names/backstories, introduction of party loss/sacrifice, and some solid world building. While the story was simplistic enough, and leaned heavily on Star Wars Episode IV for inspiration, I thought it was solid enough.

As for its gameplay, this is where I feel FFII gets most of its hate... and I understand why. Gone are the typical levels and experience points from pretty much every RPG in existence. In its place, it is replaced by a list of character stats/attributes, of which, only through repetition, does your party get stronger. For example, the more you get hit, the more max HP that character grows. Or the more offensive magic you use, the stronger it becomes.

On paper, this sounds like a great idea. However, it just doesn't work out all that well in execution. Instead, it incentivizes players to level up their party by attacking EACH OTHER in a battle against low level mobs.

Saying all this though, I really do give them credit for their interesting game mechanic ideas and risks they took to make something new. Comparing it to a different game/series, I'd say it is very similar to MGS3's camouflage system. Cool idea, but flawed in practice.

If you care about JRPG history, I'd still give FF1 and FF2 a playthrough.

REVIEW FOR FINAL FANTASY 1:

Final Fantasy 1 is one of the most beloved games of all time spawning one of the most beloved franchises of all time but does it still hold up today? Well there are literally dozens of different iterations and remakes of this title alone that each one has it's own balancing making slightly different experiences between each version. The version I chose to play is the PS1 version through the Origins Collection which is perhaps the most faithful adaptation to the NES version in terms of general balancing and item options. The main difference is this version has vastly improved visuals, and orchestrated soundtrack. The story follows a prophesied 4 heroes of light who set off on a journey to defeat the agents of chaos and restore balance to the lands of Cornelia. The story is rather simplistic but it has this charm to it that feels timeless almost like a fairy tail for the modern ages, especially with the the villain of the game. The combat is the bare essentials when it comes to turn based combat, but that doesn't make it any less engaging or fun to play. There are dozens of classes to choose from to build your team, and tons of resistances, and weaknesses that you can use to your advantage. With all that said FF1 is still a very basic RPG that if you go in expecting something more akin to the series' later entries you might not feel all that satisfied, but if you keep an open mind then you just may find yourself having a pretty decent time overall.

Really an excellent package, put together with a lot of care (besides the bizarre Memo Save these games have--they self-destruct when you turn off the system, not when you load them).

Fixes all the bugs from the Famicom games, adds a couple neat features and gives 'em graphics that have critics saying 'that looks like an acceptable Super Nintendo game!'

Best way to play these two, I think, because the preserve the original mechanics which were gutted in future remakes. That's really the only reason I'm double-reviewing these, to give props to this collection in particular.

Advice for #1: Read Jack Vance or play Baldur's Gate to get used to the idea that sometimes wizards just need a nap
Advice for #2: Play Morrowind, then play the game pretending it's Morrowind, or, Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Levelling System, or, Run Naked Thru the Trees and Watch Your Evade Stat Soar

'Guy speak beaver.'